Entrepreneurship is for Everyone
The Missing Ingredient In our article introducing the Digital City, we mentioned that the key ingredient to activating a Smart City is to incorporate entrepreneurship. In cities that are not considered technological hubs, innovation has been confined to individual efforts and siloed organizations to produce a product, produce a business model, and find funding. Our goal is to create a cultural shift where entrepreneurial principles and open innovation are embraced by all sectors of our community and beyond. At Start Co. we believe that Peter Drucker was right in saying that, “the best way to predict the future is to create it.” For us it means that “Entrepreneurship is for Everyone.” Status Quo United States cities are falling behind in terms of economic and technological growth. Traditional approaches have not succeeded in reversing this trend, but not from a lack of effort. Now more than ever, we need to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit to truly advance and move beyond incremental innovation that isn’t keeping up. This does not mean that everyone needs to begin their own startup, but rather we ought to allow the framework and strategies behind entrepreneurship to direct our future. To embrace entrepreneurship is to shift our guiding question from “how can we stay afloat?” to “what can we accomplish if?” A Community Built on Entrepreneurship “Entrepreneurship is for Everyone” literally means that we invite all of our community members to participate. In Memphis we are blessed with diverse community members. We have known for a very
Crafting or Re-crafting your Sales Process
In our last post supporting existing small and minority businesses we recommended looking at the fundamentals of your existing business. Today we focus on examining your sales process with some thoughts from our President, Andre Fowlkes. . Understanding the Sales Cycle Whether you are in a pandemic or in “normal” times, we must constantly look to become more efficient. Your sales process is a great place to start. We must shorten our sales cycles — the timeline between customer discovery and getting paid by the customer — in order to reduce lost leads and close more deals. To start, prioritize and rank leads to sort out where your time should be spent. The sales cycle should be easily transferable to a business’s financial revenue assumptions — as in match up to your financials historical and prospective (aka budgeting method). It’s the key to the business model. A sales cycle must be planned and managed, which takes time, reflectio, math, and resources which invariably are usually left out of financial projections. As you reflect, here are some activities to consider in regards to managing your sales cycle: Amount of time needed daily to generate leads and how (marketing/prospecting) Amount of time working the leads to increase engagement and interest from clients Amount of time working the pipeline of opportunities Amount of time managing prospects and learning their behavior Amount of time spent gathering data on prospects Amount of time analyzing gathered data Amount of time spent closing and how Amount of
Alumni Spotlight: Surface Medical Solutions
In this edition of the alumni spotlight, we are highlighting Surface Medical Solutions LLC, a minority owned business specializing in the surfacing of surgical implants and instruments with metal finishing, buffing, and glass beading. The vision behind the business came to founder, Kevin Briggs, twelve years ago. After having worked for over 29 years as a medical device technician, Kevin saw that medical manufacturers struggled to meet customer deadlines. Kimberly Briggs, Kevin’s wife and business partner, observed medical products as well from her 16 years of experience as a surgical technician. As a result, Kevin and Kimberly began devising a plan to save money, purchase equipment, and to open for business. After a few attempts in getting their business up and running, the business leveraged Start Co. Programs in 2020 and signed their first customer late last year. We reached out to the founders recently to get some insights. What would you recommend to entrepreneurs beginning their journey? “You must have a plan. Write everything down that you need to begin your business. Surround yourself with knowledgeable people and ask a lot of questions. I wish we would have met Ryan [Ramkhelawan] years ago and to have been a part of the Start Co. program. We could have skipped some of the hardships. There were many things that we didn’t know, including creating business plans and sales pitches or applying for grants or loans.” How do you go about finding talent that fulfills your business’s needs? “First, you should see
An Introduction to Digital Agriculture: Part 2
This two-part blog post provides a basic overview of the emerging digital agriculture segment. Part two summarizes future challenges and frontiers in the segment as the market and technologies progress. Part one introduces the existing technology and concept of digital agriculture. Breaking the connectivity barrier Although data-generating tech is quickly becoming more accessible, there remain critical steps to bringing the full potential of Digital Agriculture to the farm. Complex software must be developed, tested, and demonstrated to successfully aggregate the massive amounts of agricultural data into actionable and user-friendly insights, an area in which entry costs remain high. Development of successful intermediary software requires extensive collaboration and consensus between the various steps in the supply chain, ensuring sufficient usability for the input provider, the farmer, and the distributor. As a result, hard information on the long-term benefits of a fully connected digital agriculture system remains relatively scarce, and the ability of providers to make a strong business case for farmers to surmount entry costs will be constrained until this analytic software is further developed. Just as importantly, a foremost prerequisite for adoption of digital ag technologies is a strong, reliable connection between all network elements, from the fields to the data-collection devices to data analytics centers. Many areas of the country, particularly rural areas, offer little or no high-speed connectivity, and those that do may be subject to signal interruption or loss. Development of economical and effective means to extend network connectivity to all farms is thus a basic prerequisite and
An Introduction to Digital Agriculture: Part 1
This two-part blog post provides a basic overview of the emerging digital agriculture segment. Part one introduces the existing technology and concept of digital agriculture. Part two summarizes future challenges and frontiers in the segment as the market and technologies progress. Overview The digital agriculture sector is developing quickly as each segment of the agricultural supply chain seeks to integrate data-driven insights into its processes. Easier access to existing data-collection technology sees the bar of entry steadily lowering; however, critical aspects of connectivity and software tech require further development. The successful bridging of the connectivity gap for rural areas, and development of reliable network software to link data-collection tech together will be critical steps toward widespread adoption, as well as development of an established market model as to which segments of the agricultural supply chain will make inroads to supply these technologies directly to farmers. The sector is enjoying increasing attention from universities, agribusiness, and other stakeholders, and steadily approaches its potential to bring estimated tens of billions of dollars to the global economy, according to the UN Project Breakthrough, along with substantial improvements in productivity, efficiency, and sustainability in the coming decade. Using data to innovate Traditionally, agricultural practices rely on time-honored systems of rough measurement, experience, and intuition. In the face of global population growth and increasingly resource scarcity, however, data-driven insights and technology can be leveraged to streamline and maximize efficiency, output, and resource conservation. Immense amounts of data are already generated on the farm: decreasing hardware
NBMBAA Demo Day Recap
On Friday, February 26th, Start Co. was happy to host the National Black MBA Association Scale Up Accelerator Virtual Demo Day. Ten Black-owned startups pitched to Start Co. President, Andre Fowlkes and Tim Smith, a venture capitalist with Bee Partners for $15,000 of cash prizes. While the Demo Day handed out some money the main goal was further investment for all businesses, which was supported by a large audience of investors present during the event. The Importance of this Work Paula Fontana, the Vice President of Strategic Programming Initiatives at NBMBAA, kicked things off speaking to the importance of Black-owned businesses in addressing the wealth gap in America. She cited this Demo Day as one method to grow opportunities for Black-owned businesses. Following Paula, Andre Fowlkes spoke to the partnership with NBMBAA facilitating Black business growth by finding the capital and mentorship support to persevere through the necessary failure that startups must endure. Tim Smith is a native Memphian who now lives in California. His company, Bee Partners, is a seed venture capital firm in San Francisco that listens to approximately 2000 pitches a year and works to increase funding exposure to the entrepreneurship scene in California for all businesses. Recently, Tim led an investment into SoundCredit, a black owned and led tech startup in Memphis, TN. 10 Great Startups The panel and the audience heard pitches from 10 great black owned and led startup businesses. They were: RxInteractive Bon AppeSweet InovCares Black Girls Do Engineer Corporation Hair Scout Sympliant
Business Development Tips
Efficient Business Development strategies are essential for all businesses whether you are an early stage firm or an existing business. Many times, firms have not validated their sales and marketing channels, and so going back to the basics can help them find their way. Even if you have an online model, understanding the mechanics of the direct sale will be helpful. The following should be considered when planning on future growth: Relationship Management- Growing and managing the right relationships for the success of your business. Centers of Influence- Those entities who have a similar customer segment but are not competition; where you can create an exchange of customers. Project Lists– Creating a list of 200 customers to go to market on and onboard so that you can learn and better build out your sales process. The goal is to figure a way to automate this process so that you don’t spend so much time lead-generating but actually working the leads. Channels – What are the top marketing avenues to generate you the right leads and then prospects? Sales Process– Do you have one; if not hypothesize one, and then test it until you have confidence. Remember you cannot have a sales process without a sell. Financials– It’s tough to grow business/revenue and not understand what it will cost you and what it will generate you. Referrals– Until we have hit product market fit, referrals should be a major factor in your business; then you will have to decide if this
From Digi.City: Post Pandemic: Will Cities Reboot?
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a time of great uncertainty, but also an opportunity to reboot to build a solid, connected foundation by embracing technologies and especially Smart City infrastructures that create more resilient cities, communities, and businesses. Read up more in this article on Digi.City here: https://www.digi.city/articles/2020/8/31/post-pandemic-will-cities-choose-to-reboot
Debt Financing Tips
Introduction Most businesses will not qualify for equity based financing during the early and growth stages of their development. In fact less than 6% of all businesses are financed by equity investments such as angel investment or venture capital. Most small businesses are financed from business and personal loans. The Small Business Administration found that owner investment and bank credit are the two most widely used kinds of financing. More to the point, these small growing firms rely heavily on external debt, receiving about three-quarters of their funds from banks in the form of loans, credit cards, and lines of credit. Capital requirements for businesses vary widely depending on rate of growth, industry sector, working capital needs and many other factors, but it should be noted that a significant number of businesses use no outside financing. Below we outline more on debt based financing and how it is secured from third parties, but first a quick disclaimer: We are not lawyers, financial advisors, bankers or accountants. If anything sounds like legal, accounting, banking or financial advice, it’s not. We are entrepreneurs and are providing our knowledge as well as commonly available information in a form to give you an overview of the types of debt and the process we have used in our businesses to support debt based business growth. Types of Debt Financing Credit Cards are issued by financial institutions and allow the user to borrow pre-approved funds at a point of sale or to complete a purchase.
Alumni Spotlight: Lucky
One of the many joys of working at Start Co. is watching the progression of our program alumni. Their success exemplifies the power of hard-work and effective business strategies in the field of entrepreneurship. Today we wanted to highlight Lucky, one of our 2019 accelerator alums. As an eCommerce fulfillment company, they enable eCommerce brands to utilize retailers as distribution networks, so a consumer can buy directly from the brand and then conveniently pick-up the order from a consumer outlet closest to them. The consumer outlet receives increased foot traffic. The eCommerce brands improve their conversion rates and keep higher margins with same day fulfillment. This means Lucky’s service is a “win-win-win” scenario for everyone involved. We ask the founder and CEO, Sneh Parmar, more about his company and his startup experience in this interview. How did you come up with this new direction for the business? “The idea behind Lucky came when I started using a particular brand of toothpaste which took a week or more to receive. When speaking with a friend, I realized that I could have been picking up this toothpaste locally and without paying for shipping. That’s when Nafis, my co-founder, and I, began to think of the benefits of creating a solution that enables eCommerce brands to leverage pre-existing retailers and shops as distribution channels.” What’s the Future of Commerce in your view? “The current version of commerce is pretty binary: solely retail or eCommerce. Most brands only focus on one, whereas the brands